Tom Scott: Tom's Language Files

S1 · E1 · 2013年5月24日

Why Jonathan Ross Can´t Pronounce His Rs 第 1 集

S1 · E2 · 2013年5月31日

Fantastic Features We Don't Have In The English Language 第 2 集

S1 · E3 · 2013年6月7日

All The Colours, Including Grue: How Languages See Colours Differently 第 3 集

S1 · E4 · 2013年6月14日

Why You Swear in Anglo-Saxon and Order Fancy Food in French: Registers 第 4 集

S1 · E5 · 2013年6月21日

There's Nothing Wrong With Saying "10 Items or Less": Descriptivism vs Prescriptivism 第 5 集

S1 · E6 · 2013年6月28日

Ghoti and the Ministry of Helth: Spelling Reform 第 6 集

S1 · E7 · 2013年7月5日

Gender Neutral Pronouns: They're Here, Get Used To Them 第 7 集

S1 · E8 · 2013年7月12日

Mele Kalikimaka: Why You Can't Say "Christmas" in Hawaiian 第 8 集

It's not that Hawaiian has a completely different word for Christmas -- it's just that Kalikimaka is the closest that Hawaiian can possibly get to the word Christmas.

S1 · E9 · 2013年12月4日

Why Do We Have "Ye Olde"? Obsolete Letters, and the Mysteries of Ye Olde Ming 第 9 集

Why do we say "Ye Olde"? Why is "Menzies" pronounced "Mingis"? To find out, we have to go back into history.

S1 · E10 · 2013年12月11日

Adjectival Order: Why A "Big Red Balloon", not a "Red Big Balloon"? 第 10 集

The order of adjectives is one of those wonderful linguistic things that no-one really notices until it's pointed out to them.

S1 · E11 · 2013年12月17日

Why You Can Tweet More In Japanese: What Counts As A Character? 第 11 集

Twitter was set up to support 140 characters. And in the English alphabet, that's easy to understand: a character is a letter, number, space or punctuation mark. People more or less agree with computers there. And if it was twenty years ago, that's exactly how the system would work. That far, no further.

S1 · E12 · 2013年12月20日

Making Flaps Vibrate In Your Throat: Voicing 第 12 集

There's an interesting thing about English that hardly anyone thinks about. There are two "th" sounds. And if you want to know why it took me twenty-one takes to record this intro, you try switching them round.

S1 · E13 · 2015年5月21日

Why Computers Suck At Translation 第 13 集

Machine translation's a useful tool, don't get me wrong. But if you actually try to use it for regular conversation, it'll fall down really quickly. Why? What makes it so difficult?

S1 · E14 · 2015年5月28日

Crash Blossoms and Being Drunk: Ambiguity 第 14 集

One comma can make a lot of difference. Language is ambiguous -- but in some very specific ways. Here's how.

S1 · E15 · 2015年6月4日

Why Can't Adults Learn Languages Like Children? 第 15 集

Kids learn languages really easily, don't they? There's this thing in your brain that just works it out -- but it switches off when you're an adult. Right? Well, maybe. But it's not that simple.

S1 · E16 · 2015年6月11日

Long and Short Words: Language Typology 第 16 集

Some languages have longer words than others -- but that's not just a simple choice. There's a lot of different ways to mix up morphemes, even if they all mean the same thing in the end.

S1 · E17 · 2015年6月18日

What Counts as a Word? 第 17 集

"Word Count" is going to count plenty of things that aren’t words too -- and it doesn’t get to a more fundamental question: what actually is a word?

S1 · E18 · 2019年7月15日

why typing like this is sometimes okay. 第 18 集

Language changes over time, and that's fine. Time for a dose of descriptivism, as the Language Files return.

S1 · E19 · 2019年8月5日

Why “No Problem” Can Seem Rude: Phatic Expressions 第 19 集

"Hello!" "Thank you!" "You're welcome!" These are all phatic expressions, and people can argue about them.

S1 · E20 · 2019年9月2日

The Language Sounds That Could Exist, But Don't 第 20 集

The International Phonetic Alphabet: one sound for each symbol, and one symbol for each sound. Except for the sounds we can't make.

S1 · E21 · 2019年12月2日

Can The Words You Read Change Your Behavior? 第 21 集

"Priming" is the idea that the words you read can change the way you act. And yes, there are papers that show an effect: but we also need to talk about the Replication Crisis.

S1 · E22 · 2019年12月23日

Why Do We Move Our Hands When We Talk? 第 22 集

Gestures are a really important part of language. But how do we use them, and why?

S1 · E23 · 2020年2月17日

The Sentences Computers Can't Understand, But Humans Can 第 23 集

The Winograd schema is a language test for intelligent computers. So far, they're not doing well.

S1 · E24 · 2020年4月13日

Abso-b████y-lutely: Expletive Infixation 第 24 集

There are rules in the English language that you've probably never been taught, but you know anyway: how to split apart words with "infixes". But you've never been taught it because some of those infixes are words you probably shouldn't use in front of your high school English teachers...

S1 · E25 · 2020年5月4日

The Hidden Rules of Conversation 第 25 集

Gricean Maxims are a vital part of how we understand each other: a set of... well, maybe "rules" is a bit strong. They're guidelines that we follow without realising it. And it's the reason that "asbestos-free cereal" sounds suspicious.

S1 · E26 · 2020年5月25日

Ə: The Most Common Vowel in English 第 26 集

"Schwa" is the most common vowel in English. Every English speaker uses it, all the time, but most people have never heard of it.

S1 · E27 · 2020年8月24日

Which Is "Bouba", and Which Is "Kiki"? 第 27 集

Sooner or later, I was going to get around to this: it's one of the most famous experiments in linguistics.

S1 · E28 · 2020年10月19日

It’s pronounced GIF. 第 28 集

Is there a "right" way to pronounce it? And why is it so complicated?

S1 · E29 · 2020年12月7日

How Many Languages Are There? 第 29 集

The answer is, of course, a bit more complicated than you might think.

S1 · E30 · 2021年3月22日

Why Shakespeare Could Never Have Been French 第 30 集

Shakespeare sounds a certain way. Why? And why could it only work in English?

S1 · E31 · 2023年9月18日

How languages steal words from each other 第 31 集

This is the only pirate reference you're getting from me.

S1 · E32 · 2023年10月16日

there’dn’t’ve 第 32 集

This script was a nightmare to pronounce.

S1 · E33 · 2023年11月6日

Does the language you speak change how you think? 第 33 集

No. Mostly.